Conventionally, the fishing reel has typically widely used a double bearing type reel which drives a spool for winding the fishing line and a spinning type one which drives a bail arm for retaining the fishing line. Most of these fishing reels are provided between a hand-operated handle and the fishing line winding member, such as the spool or rotor, with a driving force transmitting system for transmitting the driving force caused by the handle to the fishing line transmitting member.
Most conventionally proposed fishing reels are so constructed that the fishing line winding member is usually driven at a predetermined speed change ratio, whereby the handle must be adjusted of its hand operation with respect to variation in a load of a fish, thereby creating the problem of requiring skills to that extent.
In order to solve this problem, fishing reels have been proposed which are manually changeable of the speed at two stages of high speed and low speed or automatically changeable at the same.
The reel of automatic 2-stage speed change type has hitherto been disposed as disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Publication No. Sho 49-26353 Gazette, which is so constructed that a drive shaft is rotatably supported to a handle shaft having the handle, the drive shaft is provided with a large face-gear engageable with a small face-gear at a tubular shaft in association with a roller and a first spur gear, a reduction tubular gear having a second spur gear is rotatably supported to the drive shaft, an intermediate shaft extending in parallel to the handle shaft is rotatably supported to a reel body, at the intermediate shaft is provided a third spur gear engageable with the second spur gear, a fourth spur gear engageable with the first spur gear is provided on a driven shaft rotatably supported to the intermediate shaft, a changeover lever is provided at the handle shaft, between the changeover lever and the drive shaft is provided a first ratchet means which, when a load on the fishing line is smaller than a predetermined load, engages by operation of the changeover lever and, when the load is larger than the predetermined load, disengaged by the same, and between the third gear and the fourth gear is provided a second ratchet means for transmitting rotation only in one direction, so that when a load acting on the fishing line is smaller, the handle shaft is directly connected with the drive shaft to rotate the roller at high speed and, when the load becomes larger than the predetermined load, the rotation speed is reduced to rotate the roller at low speed.
Such speed change apparatus is automatically changeable of the speed at two stages, but has the problem in that construction is complicated and manufacturing cost is high.
Also, the speed change apparatus, which can changeover the speed at high and low not by automatic operation but by manual operation, has been proposed. This apparatus uses a planetary gear mechanism so as to diminish a pitch diameter of each planetary gear, thereby reducing a speed ratio between the high and the low. However, the planetary gear is limited in reduction of its pitch diameter in view of strength, thereby creating the problem in that it is difficult to obtain a desired gear ratio without enlarging the apparatus as a whole and that the use of planetary gears makes its structure complicated and manufacturing cost high.
The inventor has hitherto proposed a manual speed change apparatus which uses a differential gear but not the planetary gear mechanism (Japanese Patent Application No. Hei 2-10983 filed on Jan. 20, 1990, filed but not yet laid-open), which is so constructed that the differential gear is supported on a disc-like gear holder so as to control or release rotation of the holder by a changeover mechanism to thereby directly connect the handle shaft (input shaft) and an output shaft, or a driving force is transmitted from the handle shaft to the output shaft through the differential gear.
In such construction, however, the differential gear is supported by use of the gear holder as the above-mentioned, whereby, when the speed change apparatus is housed in the reel body, it is required to provide a space for allowing the gear holder to rotate, thereby creating the problem in that the fishing reel becomes large-sized as a whole and larger in weight.